


To go home

by DawnlitWaters



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Backstory, Developing Relationship, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, Gen, No Spoilers, Not Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Post-Movie: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-01-27 13:38:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12583084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DawnlitWaters/pseuds/DawnlitWaters
Summary: They’d so nearly not got caught up in it all, too. Services rendered, units in the bank, and the d’ast Aakon idiot had looked sideways at Gamora, and said:“Are you from the new colony?”





	1. Prologue

 

When the hail comes through, it’s Groot who answers it.

Rocket is nearby, going through his toolkit, trying out a few ideas with scraps and spare parts cannibalised from the _Quadrant_. He doesn’t register the hail call until –

“I am Groot?”

Muffled sounds of someone being very polite but also very uncomprehending. Groot taps the screen with a twiggy finger.

“I am Groot!”

More muffled incomprehension. Rocket puts down the latest half-finished gadget, and clambers up beside his friend.

“What is it already? Some loser wantin’ us to kill rats in the basement? Let me see this, you know you aren’t s’posed to answer this.”

He twists the screen around.

Two Zehobereian faces look back at him, a male and a female, their expressions carefully neutral. The three of them regard each other carefully.

“Oh” says Rocket.

~

It was the job on Murtan that did it. If it hadn’t been for that contract on Murtan, maybe they’d all have lived happily ever after, or some crap like that.

They’d so nearly _not_ got caught up in it all, too. Services rendered, units in the bank, and the d’ast Aakon idiot had looked sideways at Gamora, and said:

“Are you from the new colony?”

That was it. Shit city, right there.

 

Star-munch had been all gooey-eyed and keen, too. Proof that humans can’t learn a damned thing – six contracts after the showdown with Ego, and there he is, telling her to ‘bond with her family’. Still all cut-up over Yondu, maybe, but sheesh. Did he ever get it wrong with these green fanatics.

Family, sch-mamily. Better off without ‘em.

 

 


	2. Discovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It had been hours: hours and hours of walking in the eerily familiar-yet-different forest. 
> 
> And then there, across a stream: the first Zehoberei she’d seen in 18 years.

 

_She wakes in the morning, with Peter’s head on her shoulder and his breath warm across her throat and collarbones.  She can feel his arm tucked up beside her, the other wrapped across her waist. He is reassuringly warm and solid, and she twists further into his embrace and places a kiss into his hair._

_He’ll wake up shortly, with pins and needles in the arm he’s mostly lying on, but he’ll still try and kiss her before he does anything else. Usually it’s her neck, or her jaw: a couple of times she’s shifted to press their mouths together, but when she does that things tend to escalate very quickly, and she’s in the mood for something slower, this morning._

_She nearly lost him again, yesterday. She places another kiss to his head, cards her fingers into his hair. He shifts against her, mumbles something, waking up a little. She squeezes her arms tighter._

_The job should have been easy: wasn’t. Chi’tauri raiding party from nowhere, lucky shots. She shivers when she thinks of the bridge: its slow, inexorable fall into the water as the abutment crumbled under a direct hit._

_Peter, turned towards her, and then suddenly dropping out of sight into the angry mess of water and rubble below._

_Beneath his sleep-shirt, there’s a large bruise on his shoulder, and several smaller on his ribs. Numerous lacerations to his arms, and one particularly deep scratch across his cheek. Lying on the gurney, while Rocket cursed and whinged and generally made an A-Grade job of patching him up, Peter had turned to her and asked if she thought it made him look ‘rakish’._

_She’d tried to smile, at the time. Which had been difficult._

_She thinks it makes him look vulnerable. Fragile. Or rather, it reminds her that he is both of these things._

_Peter shifts against her, draws in a large breath and nuzzles in against her neck. She can feel the scrape of stubble and the softness of his mouth._

_“Hey.”_

_“Good morning.”_

_He settles in against her, pressing a kiss to the side of her throat. She strokes her hand over his uppermost arm, sliding in under the sleeve of his shirt to feel all the way to his shoulder, where she’s careful to keep her touch light. He hums contentedly and tucks his face into the crook of her neck._

_“Hope you aren’t expecting a morning of crazy athletic sex. I feel really,_ really _sore.”_

_She snorts into his hair._

_“Hey, it’s happened before.”_

_“Has it?” she teases, shifting her hand from his hair to his lower back, sliding under the hem of his shirt. He shivers against her a little and she smiles into his curls._

_“Don’t be mean.”_

_She squeezes his arm, traces patterns back and forth over his spine. He relaxes against her, breathing slow and even. She closes her eyes and basks in the contentment._

_It is still new, this thing between them, and this part especially. She is getting used to sharing a bed, albeit slowly, and the way he wraps himself around her when they sleep. It makes her feel warm and safe, both physically and in some less tangible ways, and she is slowly adjusting to trusting someone with quite this much of herself._

_The others will be awake soon, and then there’ll be breakfast, and dishes and someone forgetting to turn the water heater on, or off, or to smack it in just the right way because it’s faulty and really needs fixing. There will be planning, debating, arguing. Odd sounds and smells from the space Rocket has commandeered as his workshop: solid, antisocial silence from Groot’s quarters. There will be training Mantis in some new social convention or use of technology, and avoiding the unpredictable Yaka arrow that Kraglin still hasn’t_ quite _mastered._

 _But now, there is peace, and calm. A little oasis just beyond the docking bay, in Peter’s old room on the_ Milano _. Gamora presses another kiss into Peter’s hair and lets herself soak it in for just a little while longer._

~

Ninety cycles later, and Gamora wakes, alone, in a bed large enough for six beings, in a room larger than the _Quadrant_ ’s central living space.

Silken canopies sweep down from the tall posts, and the fine material of the curtains floats gently in the breeze from the open windows.

She’d been dreaming. Dreaming of a smaller bed, in a smaller room. Or perhaps remembering is a better word, because once upon a time it had been real.

She closes her eyes, tries to catch hold of the images and memory, though it’s already fading.

In the dream, Peter is lying beside her and pressing a long, lingering kiss to her neck. His hand slides up over her ribs, and then he’s trailing kisses down her chest to her navel. She’d thought she was clothed, but then suddenly she isn’t, and his mouth is soft and hot on her skin.

She remembers putting her hands in his hair, if not that morning then another, and pulling him up to kiss her properly. She remembers feeling the weight of him against her and the sharp press of his hipbones, how it set something alight in her stomach.

She remembers it being so good she could barely breathe, her fingers curling against his shoulders and her spine flexing, lifting her hips to meet him, moving together in a perfect, too-much, not-quite-enough rhythm that left her breathless.

That leaves her breathless now, just thinking about it.

She sits up, panting a little, feeling wild, irrational and horribly, achingly lonely.

~

She washes and breakfasts in her suite of rooms, the table laid out for her by unseen hands, as usual. She sits at the fussy little table and inhales the once almost-forgotten scents of Zehobereian food.

The large glass doors beside her open onto a spacious balcony, beyond which the view becomes dense, colourful forest and the hazy mirages of mountains in the distance. As she pours the aromatic tea and begins her daily routine afresh, her mind drifts back to her first steps through those trees.

The overwhelming sense of fear is clearest in her mind – that the trader on Murtan had been wrong, or lying. That his information about a Zehoberei colony had in some way been false. She had refused to hope, and as the _Milano_ had drawn closer to the co-ordinates of her former home-world, her stomach like lead, she had nearly lost faith entirely.

~

 _The clunks and bangs of meteors sound off the hull, but they’re small fry, low impact, and the ship flies through pretty easily. Peter grits his teeth and concentrates, and even Rocket refrains from making any snide remarks about his piloting skills. Around the_ Milano’s _small cockpit, the other Guardians are quiet: the comm link back to Kraglin on the_ Quadrant _stays silent._

_They all know they’re flying through the remains of Gamora’s home-world._

_~_

_The other planets in the system are mostly barren rocks, but the nearest to the meteor field is green with vegetation, even from space. It’s small – smaller than earth - with more land than water._

_The_ Milano _hovers in orbit, and the planet rotates slowly, far, far beneath them._

_Gamora sits in silence in the cockpit, her fingers rigid around the arm of her seat. Her breathing is short and sharp, and for a moment it seems she might be having a panic attack. Peter lays a hand over hers, gently prises her fingers from the metal until they’re loosely wrapped around his hand. Drax rests a heavy but reassuring grip on her shoulder._

_“You do not have to go down there” he says, voice level and calm._

_“Probably a load of hooey, anyway” Rocket adds._

_“I am Groot.”_

_“Exactly. The kid’s got smarts.”_

_Gamora draws a very shallow, shaky breath._

_“I want to see. I want to see for myself.”_

~

 _Sinking down below the canopy of the trees, the_ Milano _lands neatly in a small clearing. As the thrusters gutter and go out, the foliage begins to settle, and the dense quiet of the forest surrounds them._

_Nothing stirs at first, and there is the faint rustle of branches above them shifting in the breeze. The older trees creak with movements too small to see, and the silhouettes of small birds flutter in and out of the tall tree trunks._

_Inside the ship it is even quieter. Everyone is watching Gamora, who is staring out through the window, hardly daring to breathe._

_Suddenly, there is a movement on the forest floor – the long grasses shift and shiver, and then something small and furry slinks out into the clearing. It pauses at the edge, picking up a nut or seed of some kind, inspects it and turns it about, before dropping it and trotting onwards._

_Peter points out of the window._

_“Hey, look it’s a racoon, like Rocket!”_

_It breaks the spell – a laugh startles out of Gamora – and while she gets her hand over her mouth almost instantly, Rocket is already cursing and yelling and trying to claw Peter’s eyes out._

~

_“I’m goin’ with you.”_

_Gamora continues packing provisions, weapons and other essentials into the small rucksack._

_“No, you’re not, Peter. You heard what the trader said. No outsiders.”_

_She pulls out a length of plain, black cloth, wraps it up around her hair to cover it and keep it out of the way._

_“Well, technically,_ you’re _an outsider, so…”_

_Finished with her hair, Gamora buckles the top of the bag closed, lifts it experimentally to settle the contents._

_“No non-Zehobereis.” She turns to look at him, finally, and is confronted with the Peter Quill Kicked-Puppy expression. She softens a little, lifts a hand to the side of his face._

_“I’ll be fine, Peter. There won’t be anything, anyway.”_

_“If you thought that, you wouldn’t be going.”_

_Gamora shrugs. Truthfully she doesn’t know what to think. Apparently reaching a decision, Peter puts his hands on her waist to tug her closer, and she steps awkwardly into his embrace. He folds his arms around her, presses a kiss to her temple._

_Because no one else is around, she drops the bag and reaches both arms around his shoulders. She likes these moments, even if she doesn’t always quite know what to do with them. Peter never seems to have any such reservations. They stand together a while longer, and then he squeezes her tighter, before reluctantly letting her go._

_“I’ll be back before sundown. The scariest thing in these woods will be me.”_

_Peter gifts her a small smile._

_“Here’s hopin’”_

_Gamora shoulders the bag._

_“I have to see, Peter.”_

_“Yeah, I know.”_

_~_

It had been hours: hours and hours of walking in the eerily familiar-yet-different forest.

And then there, across a stream: the first Zehoberei she’d seen in 18 years.

Even here, sat eating breakfast and fruit tea in the Zehober palace, she still finds it hard to believe.

~

_“Holy crap” are the first words out of Peter’s mouth, as he steps off the cargo bay ramp, where he’s obviously been waiting since sundown._

_Gamora swings her leg over the saddle of the hover-cycle, giving its quiet, sullen driver a reassuring glance. Not that she seems to need it: the girl is in her early twenties at most, and not the most sociable of creatures, even by Zehoberei standards. Over an hour’s drive back to the_ Milano _, and Gamora has learnt little more than the girl’s name – Demayvi – and that she knows how to drive the rusty old hover._

_That she owns it, or is allowed to drive it, is not entirely clear._

_But sundown had been approaching – has now passed, in fact – and she knew Peter would be fretting._

_“Is that - ? No way, are they_ here _?”_

_Peter jogs out to meet her and Gamora cannot contain her emotions, which have been building for the past several hours. She throws her arms around him and cries into his shoulder._

_“There’s a colony, Peter. A little colony, right here, all along.”_

_“Oh my God. Did they know you? Like, from before?”_

_Gamora steps back, draws breath. She_ is _happy. Happy to have rediscovered her people, her culture. But that question has a certain amount of baggage with it._

_The honest answer is something of a relief. She holds Peter’s kind, smiling face in her hands and shakes her head._

_“No, no. They didn’t know who I was.”_

_~_

The women arrive to help her dress shortly after breakfast, and she is helped into a fine red dress, trimmed with gold, that wraps close about her and drops artistically to trail a little on the floor.

It’s not difficult to put on, and yet they fuss and primp and set everything one way then the other. She leaves them to it for the most part, holding her hair out of the way as required and looking at the stranger in the mirror, in her impractical red dress.

The hair is another story entirely – they make swift work of what would take her days. Braids and beads, clips and ties, all carefully wound and placed, until her hair is an intricate work of art on her head, the pink clearly visible wound through the black.

She turns her head side to side, ostensibly admiring their work but really just fascinated. The girls giggle and laugh with each other as they finish up, brushing various products across her face to cleanse, moisturise, tone and recolour. There are small gems to be stuck on at the corners of her eyes, false eyelashes, shimmering creams that reshape her face, and any number of lip colours that they consider and debate between them.

Shoes are set out – vaguely sensible wedge heels today, thank goodness – and an array of golden jewellery. Again, the maids bicker and point at what should go with what, and she waits patiently for them to make their selection and dress her.

Finally, adjustments made and a few last tweaks to her hair, the maids depart, still giggling about their evening plans, and she is once again alone in her room.

Gamora stands before the mirror and surveys the reflection. She smooths down the dress, inspects the golden bangles; leans in to survey the complex work of light and shade around her eyes.

There is a knock on the door, and a polite call.

She steps back, takes one last look as she does every morning, and steps out to meet her public.

The Princess of Zenova-Whober once again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this happened.
> 
> I was trying to get myself together and un-wrangle Chapter 7 of 'Go Your Own Way', but this kept getting in the way. So here it is. Several other chapters already written, because there's nothing that gets in the way of solid progress on your multi-chapter fic like some /new/ chapters of headcanon from another story arc entirely.


	3. Spiral

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He’d been wrong. Very, painfully, wrong.

 

Ninety cycles.

_Ninety._

Peter glares at the ceiling. The Zune does nothing to improve his mood. Rain patters loud and unevenly on the hull above, and thunder rumbles off in the distance. He can hear the other Guardians in their various errands around the ship – the faint smell of cooking wafts in around the door – but he’s in no mood to be sociable.

Ninety cycles.

Ninety cycles and counting.

It’s the longest period of passive-aggressively not speaking to each other he and Gamora have ever had. It’s made worse by the fact that she’s on another planet – literally, this time. Ninety cycles is a long time to ignore the one you love.

 _If she still does_ , says a traitorous little voice in Peter’s head.

He squeezes his eyes shut.

_Of course she does, deep down. It’s just an argument. A misunderstanding._

_It’s not_ serious.

Even if he is still just a tiny bit furious.

~

_“What the hell is going on?”_

_Peter finds himself once again in peacekeeper mode. This time holding a very irate Rocket back from a small delegation of Zehobereis, who are standing officiously at the door of the Milano._

_“These green bastards think they can just walk in and steal Gamora’s stuff!” Rocket yells, fur bristling._

_“We are not here to_ steal _anything. We are here to collect the possessions of our most beloved and beautiful princess, empress of the Zehobereian Galactic Colonies and Peoples, and high ruler of the planet Zenova-Whober.”_

_Peter wrinkles his nose._

_“Who?”_

_“They mean Gamora, dumbass.”_

_Peter laughs._

_“Gamora’s not a princess!”_

~

He’d been wrong. Very, painfully, wrong.

They’d hit an impasse with the little Zehoberei group, who had eventually left, irritated and snippy, while Peter and Rocket had retreated to the ship, confused and increasingly concerned for Gamora’s safety.

Comms had proved fruitless, and he and Drax were quite literally packing for a rescue mission when, as dusk fell, another party of Zehobereis had appeared.

Gamora among them.

~

_Peter throws open the hatch, jogs down the ramp to meet her. This time she’s arrived with a larger group, the sullen hover-cycle driver nowhere to be seen. These Zehobereis are smarter, more neatly and more impressively dressed._

_He reaches out his hands to her, relieved more than anything, and then one of the larger, heavily-set males takes a step forward and socks him hard on the jaw._

_Peter falls sideways with a yelp of pain, hitting the dirt hard. Drax has followed as far as the bottom of the ramp, and pulls his knives._

_“How dare you, alien scum!”_

_“Drax, no!” Gamora yells, wrenching the Zehoberei male aside “These are my friends, enough!”_

_“What the hell?” Peter sits up, clutching the side of his face. He stares wide-eyed up at Gamora._

_“Do not speak to our princess.” An older, female Zehoberei fixes him with a look._

_“What? Gamora – ”_

_“Silence!”_

_The male Zehoberei makes to strike Peter again, but Gamora wrenches his shoulder, hard, and he stumbles backward, looking about him in disbelief. She pushes past him, reaches her arm down to help Peter up._

_“These are my friends, Madam Councillor. They will not be harmed.”_

_The older female says nothing, but continues to look daggers at Peter. He dusts himself off, jaw still smarting. Gamora puts a hand to his shoulder._

_“We need to talk.”_

_“You think?”_

_~_

They’d gone into the ship, to their room in fact, for some privacy.

Although given the volume of the conversation that followed, it hardly mattered.

She’d started with what she’d seen that day – her second trip into the Zehoberei city beyond the forest. The buildings, the public spaces – their careful, hopeful expansion from a few beleaguered transport vessels into a settlement, a village, a city.

He’d listened, been genuinely interested, despite the ache in his jaw. He’d wanted her to be happy and she was, he could feel it. He’d pushed down the frantic, panicky buzzing under his diaphragm, the uneasy feeling that something wasn’t right.

He’d listened, and kept his mouth shut.

And then things had got complicated.

~

_“Why do they think you’re a princess?”_

_Gamora folds her arms across herself, protectively. She shifts her weight, side to side._

_Peter’s expression goes from bewilderment to concern._

_“I mean, you’re not, right?”_

_“I was never a crowned princess, no.”_

_A pause. Gamora holds her expression neutral, but Peter’s expression hardens._

_D’ast it._

_“That doesn’t answer my question.”_

_They’re right, Gamora thinks bitterly. You can’t trick a trickster._

_She sighs, loudly._

_“I wasn’t a crowned princess, but I was a royal. I didn’t mean for them to find out.”_

_“Or for me to find out, apparently.”_

_He looks oddly hurt by this revelation. He folds his arms, defensively._

_“It’s not important.”_

_“Isn’t it, though?”_

_Gamora shrugs, doesn’t look at him._

_“Why are you lying to me, Gamora?”_

_She looks up at him sharply. He’s studying her face, brows furrowed._

_“I’m not.”_

_Peter raises his eyebrows: an unspoken ‘Oh really?’_

_“Look, it’s not. I used to be one of the royal family, but that’s… that’s history. I was a child, and no one here was ever likely to recognise me. They only realised when my shawl came loose over my hair –”_

_She gestures to her hair, and its vivid pink layers._

_“What?” he frowns, confused by this apparent leap in the conversation._

_She hisses, stumbling over the first of many, many things she never found the time to tell him._

_“My hair – the colour. Zehoberei society has very distinct roles, and they’re linked to hair colour. Like Nova Corp uniforms but… for your genetics.”_

_“And pink means you’re a princess?”_

_“A royal, yes.”_

_They stand in silence. Gamora rubs her arm with her hand, a nervous tick, as if she’s cold. She stops herself._

_“It’s not important” she says, again._

_“Yeah, sure. Their lost princess returns to their brand new planet, and it’s not important.”_

_“Peter.”_

_He continues to look at her. She has the odd feeling that he’s choosing his next words very carefully._

_“Why do they think you’re staying, huh?”_

_She opens her mouth, closes it. Peter watches her, and she waits for him to cut in and say something, ask another question, or needle her with a barb._

_Fill the silence, like he always does._

_He doesn’t._

_The silence drags on. He’s apparently content to let her hang herself with this one._

_It begins to dawn on her just how furious he really is._

_“I told them I would” she blurts, almost in spite of herself._

_~_

That’s the first spiral. The first of many, in increasing volume and vitriol.

She thinks it might go on for ever: him asking her why she hadn’t told him about her life before Thanos; her unable to explain, even to herself. Her reasons are many, various, contradictory and overlapping. She begins to invent new ones and he calls her a liar. He keeps asking questions and she calls him worse.

He thinks if he can just say the right thing she’ll come clean: this strange, deceptive new version of Gamora, who has a past beyond her ‘Past’ that he’s never even guessed at. But she’s hiding things – still – and it’s maddening, sickening and he can only yell and scramble as the things he’s built a new life on start to crumble around him.

It’s an argument for an outlet, not a conclusion.

Until finally he hits on the issue they’re both avoiding.

~

_“Why the hell do you want to stay here?”_

_Silence. Both of them breathing heavily, the crux of the argument reached._

_He could go on – ‘Why the hell do you want to stay here,_ without me _?’ – but he’s too proud or too cowardly, one or the other, so he doesn’t say it. Too in love – even in this terrible, terrible argument – to look too closely at the foundations._

_She can’t seem to answer him, and for a moment he thinks he may have won: convinced her to come away with him, after all._

_And then she tips her chin, and digs in her heels._

_“They’re my people: my duty is here.”_

_“Seriously?!”_

_“I don’t expect you to understand.”_

_“Oh, I get it. I’m an honourless thief with no morals, and you’re suddenly some great being with a higher purpose. We’ve been there before, remember, and look how that turned out. Maybe these whack-jobs turn out just like Ego?”_

_“They are the last surviving members of my species. They are not ‘whack-jobs’.”_

_“Oh yeah? So what, now you’ve ‘found your family’?” He makes air quotes with his hands, reminding her with deliberate bile of her own words. It’s too far – he knows it, even as he does it._

_Gamora flinches, scowls._

_She never did know how to back down._

_One of her issues._

~

And now, here she is. About to climb back into the bed she made, or at least the bed made for her by her servants. In the palace. Where she lives.

Here she is, looking in a mirror at a face that isn’t quite her own.

She misses him, terribly.

She misses all of them. Rocket’s sarcastic sense of humour. Drax’s simple but sustaining philosophy. Mantis’ curiosity and innocence. Kraglin’s quirky sense of friendship and even Groot’s odd, infrequent moments of adolescent affection.

But she misses Peter most of all.


	4. Precedent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Precedent. She rolls the world around her mind, silently. A chance to bring the Guardians back. To have a more sensible conversation with Peter.

The morning is quiet, things are still. The air is warm without humidity, and the light a pale golden colour that makes everything seem new, and delicate.

Gamora, an early riser by hard-taught habit, meanders the palace gardens – a series of interlocking courtyards between the still fresh-faced cut-stone buildings. Earth shows through between the plants in the ornamental arrangements – planted in anticipation of growth, expansion and longevity, not for immediate beauty. She likes that – it speaks of hope.

With time to spare before her first engagement, she settles on a bench in the shade, sweeping her skirts under her. Just light summer material, thank goodness, but the novelty of swishing fabric is still just new enough to be enjoyable, rather than irritating.

A loud crash across the courtyard startles her, and she sees a skinny figure paused with a tray of glassware – some of it now shattered on the paving. The girl mutters something inaudible, and then goes inside, stamping her feet more than seems natural. She returns in a moment, and begins aggressively sweeping the shards into a small dustpan, glowering all the while, her blue-black low-lights picked out in the sun.

Gamora recognises her – the sullen hover-cycle driver, Demayvi. New at the palace, it seems, and not entirely enjoying herself.

_Makes two of us,_ Gamora supposes.

She reminds herself that she chose this. More than that, it was the right thing to do. A case in point is her next engagement – a Council meeting, her second since arriving. One of many opportunities to help and guide the remaining Zehobereis, to help them re-build in all senses of the word. The Council is a forum to settle and adapt problems of their re-growing civilisation – to uphold Zehoberei culture and to advise on the application of old laws to new circumstances. The survivors number many legal, cultural and military professionals, and day to day the city is run much as Gamora remembers from her childhood. But the Council provides oversight, guidance – a many-headed stand-in for their previous overlord, the Emperor.

Or father, as Gamora was occasionally allowed to call him.

She thinks of her fellow Councillors – a motley collection of ‘what’s left’, including herself. All that remains after she summoned Thanos, all those years ago.

_No,_ she shakes herself, physically and mentally. She didn’t _summon_ Thanos. That’s a child’s belief, a fancy she was old enough to know better than, even at the time.

A faint breeze crosses the garden, stirring a few leaves and rippling her skirt. It reminds her to draw breath. The new-yet-familiar trappings of her old life are pulling on her. If she’s not careful, she will go under.

Those who _are_ left after the destruction are a patchwork of people. A random assembly of skills and trades, all classes represented. Off-worlders are more common, for obvious reasons – those who lived in small, satellite mining colonies, or those who lived in alien systems altogether. Many were still in transporters – arriving in time to see their world consumed, but many more had already arrived for the ‘festivities’, and were swallowed in the fire that destroyed the planet. If it hadn’t been for the ‘festivities’, they’d have lived full lives. Another wrong she has done these people, although it is by proxy: her father’s design.

_She_ hadn’t sent the invitations, or ordered the empire-wide broadcasts and hails. She hadn’t desired the celebration in the first place, let alone the crowds to go with it.

Others managed to get into transporters in the meagre evacuation, but so few. They are left now with miners and merchants, space-port workers and lone-wolves, and the one surviving ambassador whose life was spared only because he was scandalously late to obey his Emperor’s command.

She still recalls her father raging about that – cursing Ambassador Churran and the perceived slur to the Emperor, Empress and their daughter.

It’s one of few things she does recall about her fellow Councillors. Former Ambassador to Xandar, Tolemor Churran, is one of the Zehoberei deemed worthy to sit at the table. His tight curls of grey hair are underset with blue – a warrior by class, but a negotiator by profession. Gamora has already tagged him as an oddity. One lone braid hangs down his neck, threaded with a Xandarian talisman. He is a quiet, infrequent speaker. And he smiles too much.

The others are a mixture of half-knowns and unknowns. A former merchant leader, with a gaunt face and predictably yellow highlights, Ardo Sants. The obligatory military representative is a general perpetually without an army, cobalt-haired Candor Barrin, previously head of the royal guard. Falmer Gabernita she does remember, if vaguely. He served her father as something important in the royal staff, but he is of uncertain function or expertise, and has appropriately nebulous lilac stripes to his short cut hair. His nephew, Zonte, seems less objectionable, despite the flush of electric-violet hair at the back of his head. He had been full of practical suggestions at the previous Council.

Which leaves Muria Armanau – lavender-haired terror of Gamora’s youth, and already something of a thorn in her adulthood. Previously cultural advisor to the Emperor, chancellor of the ultra-exclusive Zenova Finishing School – pink and purple-haired only need apply – and self-appointed guardian of Zehoberei mores and values. Armanau had been present on Gamora’s ill-fated trip back to the _Milano_ and has taken a dim view of Gamora’s previous company. She has taken pains to ensure that Gamora’s old clothes have been ‘misplaced’ on several occasions.

Mercifully, as an adult Gamora seems to have been able to forego the ‘duty’ that had so nearly been forced on her as a child. If that plan ever resurfaces, its staunch advocate would be Armanau.

Gamora kicks her heels on the bench. The morning light has become brighter, hotter. The stones reflect back the brightness, creating a small oven of the courtyard.

She goes inside.

 

~

 

The usual players are there, variously hunched, lounging and ram-rod straight at the table. They wade through planned engineering projects, petitions, marriage certificates of cross-colours – breeding, as Armanau delicately explains, must be considered when the gene pool is so small.

Gamora understands perfectly that Madam Councillor does not want any muddying of hair colour to disrupt social rank in their new system. She holds her tongue, with difficulty. Most requests are passed, in any case – it seems to be a precaution only, although Gamora is wary when she can’t quite see the rules.

Her position gives her power of absolute veto at the very least – he father would never have suffered a council at all. But she is also wary of disrupting what seems to be working, what has already re-built a capital city and several small towns, expanding infrastructure cautiously across their new landscape. The people have the means to feed, clothe and shelter themselves comfortably, access to leisure and worship. It is a small miracle that Gamora can still barely believe, even sitting in the midst of it.

She has made herself useful – her main objective that makes the rest of it worth putting up with. She has advised on defensive and offensive measures, on training and strategy, should they need it. She has surprised herself – and her fellow Councillors – with her knowledge of other races, other planets. Like Churran, she is a surprise diplomat, a wrong-haired oddity.

In a few months she knows they won’t need her. Her last act as princess, queen, or empress – whatever they might be calling her by then – will be to make them turn and look on the new world that _they_ have made. Their incredible achievement.

And she will make Muria Armanau relinquish her leather pants and bootleg vests, and return to her life as a space pirate.

The day’s business concluded, she stands to leave. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Falmer jab a blunted, flabby elbow into his nephew’s ribs. Zonte starts visibly, stumbles over to her.

 “Your royal highness, Empress of the Zehobereian Galactic Colonies and Peoples, and high ruler of the planet Zenova-Whober –”

_Empress indeed_. She only just has a planet to rule over, let alone an empire. She has not yet been crowned queen – technically her status, with her parents no longer living. And an empress further requires an empire. The Galactic Colonies are empty – their people all here, farming the land, building bridges and re-establishing communication towers.

She holds in a derisive snort. She cannot find a pause to put him out of his misery but her titles (now largely fictitious) take so long that he forgets his question, and winds down all by himself.

“Yes?” she prompts.

“Uhhh…”

Behind him, Falmer coughs, sharply. Zonte jumps.

“A celebration! A celebration, your highness. The Council is holding a grand event, in three days’ time, in your honour, and –”

“With what?” she cuts him off, turns to the assembled elders.

“My lady –” Sants begins.

“With _what?_ Why are you wasting resources on this… this _frippery?_ ”

The elders look at the floor, like children. Except Churran who, still smiling, sips his fragrant tea.

“The people wish it, your majesty” says Sants, at length.

The last bastion of the total ratbag bastard, Peter would say. Putting words in the mouths of the people. She hears his voice in her head, unbidden. She smiles to herself, a happy, private memory. Then it occurs to her how she must resemble Ambassador Churran, and she wonders if he too is hearing Peter’s voice in his head, or something like it.

She finds herself unexpectedly warming to Ambassador Churran, after all.

 

~

 

She vetoes the ball, only to find she has crushed the hopes and dreams of all the palace maids, guards, cooks, gardeners and anyone else who felt certain they would have been invited. Even the schoolmistress on the next day’s visit in the city had reproachfully asked her why the ball was cancelled.

Behold Gamora, destroyer of worlds.

“That’s how you get husbands” her maid informs her, while styling her hair for the evening outing. A concert, in the newly opened theatre. The remark awakens Gamora from her reverie – rekindling snatches of broken Zehoberei music from her childhood. She snaps out of it, twists on her seat in front of the vanity mirror to look up at the maid.

“Excuse me?”

The girl – Agda – shrugs.

“Parties, grand balls, celebrations. You can see which of the young men dance, and which don’t. I like the strong, silent ones.”

Behind them, the Demayvi girl is lurking about by the wardrobe, having apparently graduated from glassware to gowns. An odd choice for either, given her warrior-blue hair, but perhaps she is a misfit. She is de-creasing already flawless dresses with a zap-gun contraption, laying them out for Agda and Gamora to choose from. Gamora can see her in the mirror, her face bored and sullen as usual.

“You’re too young to be married” Gamora informs Agda, sternly.

The girl titters. In the mirror, Gamora sees Demayvi smirk.

“I am eighteen star-cycles, my lady!”

_Older than I was_ , Gamora thinks, savagely. _But still too young._

Out loud, she says “I’m sure you’ll find a husband with or without the ball, Agda.”

Agda shrugs again, finishes off a smooth, neat plait.

“I was thinking of you, your highness.”

“I don’t require a husband” Gamora says stiffly. Probably too quickly. In the mirror, the Demayvi girl smirks again, and continues her _zapping_ of clothing in a particularly sarcastic way, if such a thing were possible.

Agda gurgles with laughter, like a well-bred fountain.

“You mustn’t die an old maid!” she cries, comically horrified at the thought.

Gamora keeps her expression flawlessly neutral. She reminds herself that she used to think like these girls, and not _so_ very long ago, either.

But weeks and months and years _have_ passed since then. Days and nights, quite a number of them in Peter’s bed, or he in hers. Would Agda really be so horrified to know that? Is she a harlot to these young women? She certainly would be to Muria Armanau, but then she’s never met expectations there and isn’t about to start now, well into her thirties and apparently even more steeped in sin than she’d realised.

Whatever future the Zenova Finishing School had prepared her for, none of its teachings anticipated a career as an assassin, a murderer, a rebel, or a witch. Being the lover of a former Ravager playboy, now nominal leader of the Guardians of the Galaxy, is not going to win her greater favour.

Is she no better than Contraxia’s dead-eyed robots? She regards her reflection – she feels closer to them now, caked in make-up and required to fix her expression, than she ever did with the Guardians.

“It would have been such a _prett_ y party, too. I heard Councillor Sants had arranged for off-worlders to bring novelties. A Xandarian magician, I think.”

Gamora blinks. _Off-worlders_. An interesting precedent for the Councillors to set, if Agda’s information is right. Precedent is everything in Zehoberei culture. Things are done the way they are done, forever and ever. _Denyo marvani._

She shivers, the prayer words rising unexpectedly inside her own head. She hasn’t prayed to any Zehoberei gods in years. Or any gods, for that matter. When they allowed the destruction of their believers, and passed out of existence with their priests, she had lost faith in the unseeable.

_Precedent_. She rolls the world around her mind, silently. A chance to bring the Guardians back. To have a more sensible conversation with Peter.

Agda pats pins into her hair.

“What sort do you like, your highness?”

“Sort?”

“Boys. I mean – gentlemen.” Agda blushes – her increasing and unchecked frankness with the princess tripping her up.

“Dancers” says Gamora, firmly. _One, in particular_.

Agda nods, curtsies and finishes up.

“I’ll order the ball re-opened” Gamora says, smiling.

Agda beams, curtsies again, less elegantly.

“Shall I inform the Councillors for you?”

She is itching to be off, herald with the news. Agda has many friends, in the palace and beyond. All of them will be breathlessly told the story of how she – Chief Handmaid to the Princess, Agda Vuldari –negotiated the reopening of the celebrations.

Gamora smiles, nods, and Agda is gone in a flash.

Gamora stands up, suddenly nervous and excited. She is out of her depth with trivialities and fripperies, always has been. That was why she ‘summoned’ Thanos in the first place. But a chance to see her friends again, on more stable, convivial terms…

Has Peter forgiven her? And has she forgiven him? Missing someone is not the same as forgiveness. She is a master at being simultaneously relieved to see him and burningly furious. Peter is also quite adept at sustaining two very different emotions, although he’s softer than she is and his anger is more brittle than his concern for her safety.

She has mostly remembered to kiss him goodnight, before slamming the door in his face. When it has been Peter’s turn to be angry, one kiss has turned into several: she’s never actually had to go back to her old room.

Turning, she is startled to see Demayvi, still lurking by the wardrobe, dresses laid out for choosing. If the girl stopped stooping and glowering, she could be very pretty, Gamora thinks.

And then mentally slaps herself. That is Armanau’s voice, risen from the distant past – describing another, glowering girl.

“Thank you, Demayvi. I can look after myself from here.”

The girl lowers the zap gun, eyes widening slightly. She steps aside as Gamora steps over to the dresses, but doesn’t leave. Gamora tries smiling at her, which has previously been known to frighten people into leaving: Demayvi defaults back to sullen.

Gamora sweeps a hand over one of the richly-coloured garments. It looks awkwardly-shaped and difficult to move in. She thinks longingly of her vests, pants and comfortable boots.

“You should be careful” Demayvi says, enigmatically. She is still holding the zapper – Gamora wonders if this is to be a creative attempt at assassination.

Gamora looks up at her. Demayvi stares at her, a bit wild-eyed for a moment. Then she drops the device, and scurries out of the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Plot, an' that.


End file.
